Self-Portrait in Needmore, Indiana, by Rochelle Hurt

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ROCHELLE HURT

Self-Portrait in Needmore, Indiana

As expected, after the wedding, the house
became a cough we lived in, trembling
in the throat of that asthmatic spring.

The streets stacked and curved like fingers
on a grease-knuckled hand gripping
the waist of our Midwestern dream.

We went sun-blind inside just looking
at each other.
Death is not working—
but wanting—too hard. My father’s body
was little more than a paper bag by the day
he died and tumbled into a graveyard.

I could have died etching my name
into the glass eye of my cage—a bay
window painted with lace. The skyline
in its expanse was a farce played out each night.

Sometimes my reflection was the star
of the show. Sometimes, it was the child
clapping from her seat, so looking out
and looking in became the same thing.
Sometimes, it just rained for weeks.

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Let's talk about metaphors and similes in this poem.

• "As expected, after the wedding, the house / became a cough we lived in," Comparing the house to a cough and then Hurt goes into more detail helping us visualize this cough. "trembling / in the throat of that asthmatic spring." This is a bad situation. They got married and things just aren't going as expected. A lot of people call that period right after marriage the honeymoon period, and it is supposed to be magical and romantic. But I can identify with the experience here, learning to live with a person you have never lived with before is difficult and takes a long time to get right. Their living together is irritating. They scratch at each other; it is painful.
• "The streets stacked and curved like fingers / on a grease-knuckled hand gripping /  the waist of our Midwestern dream." As if their dream--getting married, settling down, working, having kids--is a girl that is being held by the streets. The "fingers / on a grease-knuckled hand gripping / the waist."
• "My father's body / was little more than a paper bag"
• "I could have died etching my name / into the glass eye of my cage." Ahhh, what an image! Now the speaker feels trapped by the whole situation, this whole marriage. And what is her "cage?" "a bay / window painted with lace." The speaker is trapped by the domesticity of it all. Her situation is a "farce played out each night."
• "Sometimes my reflection was the star / of the show. Sometimes, it was the child / clapping from her seat," Then sometimes she would look out of her situation and sometimes she would look inward--into herself. In both instances this speaker sees the same thing. And sometimes it just rains.

via GIPHY

And don't we all stop at times in our lives and look at ourselves? Sometimes we look and see ourselves as the star on the stage, the lights in our ryes. But sometimes we see ourselves up there, up on the stage and we cannot stop ourselves from clapping. Life is a struggle, it is not easy and no one said it was going to be. But we do need to realize that we can do it. We can be successful when life is tough and "it rains for weeks."